


You're My Safe and Sound

by hello_lovely



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Light Angst, M/M, boris is short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:15:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25226677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hello_lovely/pseuds/hello_lovely
Summary: This time, Boris is the one who can't sleep. But Theo is there for him and makes him feel safe and loved.
Relationships: Theodore Decker & Boris Pavlikovsky, Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 5
Kudos: 79





	You're My Safe and Sound

**Author's Note:**

> SOOOO I tried, I'm struggling right now to do anything so I thought "hey let's just publish stuff and see what happens." Honestly, they're both pretty OOC and they're is not nearly enough sadness and drugs and alcohol to be canon but I was feeling the fluff so this is what you all get. Have fun. 
> 
> The lyrics at the start and end, as well as the title, are all from "Safe and Sound" by Yoke Lore.

_“Sunrise by your side, we’ll find our own heights_

_Waking up in dark clouds, it’s a shakedown_

_Believe that all my love and all my blood keeps me up_

_I’m singing for my age cause I’m believing in the change.”_

I couldn’t sleep.

It was rare that, of the two of us, Potter would be the one to be asleep while I lay awake. Or at least, it had been when we were children. But after circumstances had led to our separation, sleep had become something difficult for me to come by. Too much energy, too many thoughts. Without the crutch that drugs and alcohol had always been for me—both Potter and I had been mostly sober since the events of Amsterdam—falling asleep was near impossible.

He’d fallen asleep several hours before, curled up around me. I’d been observing his face for just as long; his strong brow usually obscured by the frame of his glasses, his high cheekbones painted by the streetlights through the window, his soft pink lips parted ever so slightly. I knew his face better then I knew my own, always had. Could recall his teenaged face perfectly even after years apart and I’d quickly re-learned his adult face in the two and a half years since we’d reunited. A scar on his lip from one time I’d hit him, another on his forehead from the MET explosion, one on his jaw that was new to me. His hair, usually so carefully styled, was loose and unkempt, his cheeks pink with sleep. He was always much softer when asleep, so much less restrained.

I could look at him for hours without ever getting bored.

That being said, I really needed to piss.

Carefully so as not to disturb his rest—he really needed it, he’d been working too hard that week—I removed the arms that held me against his chest. Pushing the covers off of myself, I rose from the bed before turning back and replacing them over him. I left the room and, after a stop at the bathroom to relieve myself, grabbed my cigarettes, and headed for the fire escape.

It was warm out—late summer, nearly fall—and I was hoping that combined with the cigarettes and the sounds of the city would soothe me to sleep. I’d come to gain much comfort from the noise that always could be heard in New York, the city that never sleeps. Always loud and busy, the hectic nature of it all was matched only by loud concerts and crowded bars in their ability to pull me out of my head and break through the buzz of thoughts. Or maybe not, the thoughts did not go away, the ideas and the plans and the philosophizing, but it took the edge off. Much like the drugs and the alcohol had, but I had been working hard to not think too hard about those things. This, of course, became a catch-22: the moment you try to not think about something, it becomes all you can think about.

I shook a cigarette out of the pack and shoved the box in my pocket. Lighting the cigarette in my mouth, I sat done with my legs over the edge of the fire escape, crossing my arms over the bar that kept me from falling six stories into the street. Far down below me, four girls were laughing and stumbling down the sidewalk. Well, three. The fourth was trailing behind a bit, smiling softly, and making sure her friends did not fall over or walk into the street. The sober friend, the mother friend. Backbone of friendship.

I was starting a new cigarette when the door behind me opened. Potter sat beside me and took the pack and lighter from my hand, selecting a cigarette and lighting it.

“Could not sleep, Potter?”

“I slept fine,” he replied, bumping his shoulder against mine, “It’s nearly six.”

That surprised me. I’d checked the time on my way out here and it had only been one. I looked down at the cigarette pack and—yeah, maybe it had been longer then I thought.

“So?”

“So what?”

“So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Potter. Just thinking.”

An arm wrapped around my shoulder, pulling me against him. Theo pressed a kiss to the top of my head before returning to his cigarette. This was, if I am honest, one of my favorite positions to find us in. Simple. Calm. When we were younger and I was so tall and he was so _not_ it was much more difficult to curl up and hide against him. I did my best, of course. But now, with him having grown to be over half a foot taller than me, I was able to curl myself against his side and feel surrounded. Protected. And so that is what I did, curled into his side, and leaned my head against his shoulder. His face pressed into my hair, nose rubbing against the top of my head and the hand that was around my reaching farther to press against my chest.

We sat like this for a long while, until the pack I had brought out was empty. Potter pushed me gently away from him before standing, offering a hand down to me which I excepted gladly. We walked into the apartment, where he guided me to the couch that sat there, one of Mr. Hobie’s Frankenstein pieces that Potter had claimed for himself. When he sat down again and pulled me on top of him, I again found myself curling against his chest. This time, though, I tucked my head under his chin where his heart sat and sighed contently as his hands rose to thread themselves in my hair. In Vegas, when we had known each other long enough to know the other's bad habits but not long enough to have learned to deal with them completely, we would sit in this position only after Potter had smoked a significant quantity of weed. He’d always had a fascination with my hair for some reason, even way back then when I know it had been disgusting. Back before I knew what shampoo or combs were, let alone had steady access to them and running water. But now, clean and conditioned and free of the product I usually had in it during day time, his hands were able to run through it and it was all I could do to keep from purring and leaning into the motion.

I felt the vibrations of his chest before I heard his words, “You’re thinking too much.”

“Yes, and you are one to talk, hm?”

“Exactly, so I’d know wouldn’t I?”

I sighed, leaning up to get a better look at him, “My head.”

“Migraine?” He asked, concern causing his brows to furrow. It was a good guess, as Potter knew I got migraines with unfortunate regularity. We both did, really.

“No, just—“ I cut myself off, leaning my head against his shoulder again, “It will not stay quiet. The fucking buzzing. The thoughts and memories and all that shit, why no break? Why can I not just sleep, you know, for a couple of hours?”

“Yeah, I know.”

We sat like that while my thoughts again started sprinting around in my head. Potter wasn’t one for talking, not right when he’d just woken up, and considering the hour he seemed content to wait for me to say whatever I needed.

And, of course, my mind took me where it always did.

“I ruined your life.”

Shock covered his face, “What?”

“Your life. It would have been better if you had never met me, you would be happier and not have dealt with all the drugs and the drinking. I am the one who got you into those, taught you how to do drugs and which ones to use when. And I taught you how to lift alcohol and cigarettes and all kinds of other things from the store. Not to mention the fucking bird, that fucking painting. I took it from you, the thing you held most dear in all of the worlds and I took it because I _could_ , because I thought that if I took it you could never leave me which was obviously bullshit and such a dumb, childish thing. And, even worse, I gave it away again and again and then everything in Amsterdam and Antwerp and…”I took a huge breath, looking away and opening the eyes I had closed during my rant in an effort not to have to see the anger I thought he should be feeling as he remembered everything I had done to him, “You would have been better off if we had not met.”

“Boris,” he sighed, and I closed my eyes and looking down at my hands folded in my lap.

Potter’s hand found it’s way to my chin, tilting my head so I was forced to look at him. And I saw no anger there. Only sadness.

Sadness that I had put there.

“Borya, no. I would not have been better off, I’d have been dead.”

“But—“

“No, no,” he cut me off, pressing his hand over my mouth, “Let’s dissect this. Okay. The drugs weren’t you. I mean, yeah, you introduced me to a lot of stuff, but you weren’t the one who got me started. Cigarettes I’d already been smoking because of Tom and prescription pills I’d already been taking because of Mrs. Barbour and Xandra. So, not you. Alcohol, again, not you. Tom was the first person I ever drank with, Mr. Barbour offered me alcohol all the time though I didn’t take it, and you knew my dad. I would have gotten there eventually. Shoplifting is nothing compared to the breaking and entering Tom and I did, though I guess we had keys so maybe it’s not _technically_ breaking in,” I scoffed, his hand still over my mouth, and he smirked, “We’ll skip the painting because that’s a lot to unpack, but as I’ve said over and over again I forgave you for that almost as soon as it happened. And you got it back. That’s what matters.”

“But Amsterdam. The hotel?”

“You mean when I tried to kill myself.”

I swallowed but nodded. It had been well over a year since the event, but I found Potter’s ability to speak of it so nonchalantly upsetting. He’d always had this way of speaking about death, though.

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“But I am the reason you were in Amsterdam. And the garage. And you got the drugs from me, and the hotel from, and the alcohol from me. Tell me, Theo, how would it not have been my fault?”

“Borya, I’d be dead a million times over if it weren’t for you. You have saved me from myself more then anyone I’ve ever known."

I didn’t know what to say to that, and so I didn’t. I was still in his lap, his hand in my hair, and could finally feel the energy starting to leave me at the lovely hour of nearly four in the morning. My thoughts were starting to slow and as Theo’s free hand made it’s way up and down my spine I was finally able to relax.

That is until he tapped my hip and lifted me off of him, dragging me over to where his laptop sat. He put on some song that I didn’t know and turned back to me, eyebrow raised.

“Would you like to dance?”

“Seriously, Potter?”

“Yes, seriously.”

I smiled, cheeks pained, and felt my tired eyes water. I sniffed, and looked up at him, reaching my arms up and around his neck, “Okay, Theo. I would like that.”

His hands moved to wrap around my waist, pulling me close to him. Neither of us was much for dancing and so really we just swayed side to side, smiling all soft like at each other. Theo bent down slightly and pressed his forehead to my own, before rubbing the tip of his nose along mine, “I love you, Borya,”

“ _I ya tebya,_ Theo.” I smiled, pressing my lips to his before pulling back to again lean my head against his chest. I breathed him in, felt the texture of his henley against my cheek, and let my eyes fall shut.

We danced like that until I fell asleep leaning against him. I woke later lying on the couch, our softest blanket on top of me and my feet in his lap as he drank his coffee. A mug sat on the table for me—boiling hot with three sugars—and a smile on his face as he typed away on his computer. I sat up and moved toward him, curling against him with my coffee, knees to my chest and head on his shoulders. Safe.

_“Your eyes burn like a torch in the winter_

_This fire won’t die tonight_

_All the days of danger, believer_

_I’ll be your safe and sound,_

_I’ll be your safe and sound.”_


End file.
